101–110 of 291 posts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPbtR4vorgY Two years ago without a brain implant.
The problem is that without an implant, only this is possible. Anything significantly more complex than moving a cursor on a screen is just not possible or feasible without an implant, because of physical (electromagnetic) limitations.
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Is there anyway to get this signal non invasively (magnetic field detection or photonically)? Or are implanted electrodes table stakes for a neural interface?
Not really, that we know of. To appreciate the complexity you could read this post[0] from Wait But Why? Your brain has approximately 40,000 neurons in the space of a cubic millimeter. Each saying something completely different. It’s incomprehensible noise unless you start dividing it up like Neuralink has. They get a few thousand probes in the size of a penny, which is a far greater level of resolution than you coul…
That was difficult to watch. While the technology is impressive, it is sickening to watch. The part where they can pair the phone via bluetooth made me want to vomit. It is obviously unnatural, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Something about seeing that animal, oblivious to what's happening, and that implant with the ability to directly record thoughts and/or remote control. The whole thing doesn't sit well wi…
This is nothing compared to what we were doing in lab several years ago. Neuralink is the least invasive of the invasive ways to conduct this research. I had to put animals down, because they would be defunct after trying to remove those bulkier devices. Neuralink is relatively humane, speaking as someone who has seen this technology in its infancy.
Much less happy are the animals we eat, those confined in zoos, and many of the pets people lock in tiny spaces.
I don't understand how you can gather such a targeted signal by sticking wires in just a few places. Like, you can't just tape a metal coat hanger to an iPhone and start getting text messages through it. But somehow you can put some wires just as few mm into the surface of a brain and extract fine motor signals??
My understanding is that neurons are like a higher-order connected mesh. A bit like many fully-connected layers in a Machine Learning model. You can't just read fine motor signals from any neuron, but given enough neurons, since they're deeply connected, you can infer a close approximation of the intended motor signals given a known output. That's why they need a lot of sampling wires in the brain; to makes sure they…
Here is the ultimate question.... What smoothing algorithms did they use to guess the 'certainty' of the 'intended' movement in a Y-Plane game vs. the X,Y grid they learned from? Having researched in this space, you don't get better results from 'training' on a X,Y space and reducing that training to a Y-grid predictor. There is a ton of smoothing going on in the video... or the metal conductor plays a huge role in t…
> or the metal conductor plays a huge role in the electrical signals they get from the implanted electrodes I highly doubt that, you must be talking about non-invasive electrodes such as EEG. When the electrodes are inside the brain and thus in the cranium, they are effectively protected from outside EM activity since they're in an effective Faraday cage, so your signal has much higher fidelity.
Pretty much this on a different and somehow related note I would still try to check if the algorithm does not just trick us into thinking that it is doing what the monkey wants it would be nice if they post some more in depth material of how the code or whatever they use looks at the end just to be sure we are not in front of a half machine clever hans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans)
TO clarify: we dont have the ability to know if the monkey made an error he wont say hey I didnt want to get that one right or win that pong movement, have your milkshake back please. And we kind of need to know that in fact when doing mathematical modeling and AI having a way to quantify that is a requirement and one of the first things they teach you about.
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> Maybe it will be able to extract speech directly from the brain, which is orders of magnitude harder than controlling a joystick. Check out https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1119-1 And yes it is definitely orders of magnitude harder than controlling a joystick
Imagine the wonders it would do for interrogation /s
With a few decades (years?) of refinement, this technology absolutely has the potential to capture private thoughts.
Sure, it may require an implant, but just like we all carry tracking beacons that have become indispensable to daily life today, in 20 years it may be “the done thing” to have an implant to control your home automation, etc. Or maybe the tech will improve to where it just needs a hat. And at that point, certain authorities will have no qualms about using it in interrogations, with or without “due process.”
Absolutely horrifying. A digital interface to the human brain is the most dangerous thing to possibly exist. Thank god I was born early enough that I'll die before this technology becomes widespread. I hope.
This is honest-to-god magic. Some cyberpunk, neuromancer, hardcore reality-bending shit. The brain is the final frontier, if technology gets a foothold in there things are going to get WILD. Also, as this stuff gets further along, there's going to be large incentives for unethical testing. Rockets can be tested with unmanned flights, but you can't really dry run brain implants.